Parolee admits DWI charge

67-year-old was the subject of a manhunt in 2004

By Bob Gardinier

Updated 9:05 pm, Wednesday, July 17, 2013

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Richard Barnes, 67, pleaded guilty Wednesday, July 17, 2013, to his second driving while intoxicated charge in the last two years. Barnes entered his plea during an appearance in Rensselaer County Court. (East Greenbush Police Department) less

Richard Barnes, 67, pleaded guilty Wednesday, July 17, 2013, to his second driving while intoxicated charge in the last two years. Barnes entered his plea during an appearance in Rensselaer County Court. (East ... more

Parolee admits DWI charge

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A man who has spent much of his adult life behind bars pleaded guilty Wednesday to his second driving while intoxicated charge since he was paroled two years ago.

Richard Barnes, 67, who is on lifetime parole, will get a year in jail when he is sentenced next month for his guilty plea to felony DWI from a 2 a.m. traffic stop on April 7 in East Greenbush. He had no license and was stopped because he failed to dim his lights for the approaching police car, authorities have said.

When Barnes was arraigned on the charge in April, Rensselaer County Judge Andrew Ceresia explained his options for getting an attorney. Barnes suggested he did not need any advice.

"I am very familiar with the workings of the justice system," Barnes told the judge.

Barnes was convicted of DWI two years ago in Watervliet.

Barnes, who was associated with the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club years ago, was the subject of a 2004 manhunt in the Adirondacks and was paroled in January 2011 from Wyoming Correctional Facility, where he served 29 years for robbery, grand larceny and parole violations. He was sentenced in 1982 to 16 to 32 years in prison for a 1981 robbery in which he and an accomplice broke into the home of a 69-year-old Albany woman, gagged her and stole her car. He was paroled in 1997 but violated parole, got four more years and was released in 2003.

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He again violated parole by fleeing into the Adirondacks, where he worked cutting down trees and lived in isolated camps owned by people he had befriended. Some camps were in the woods along dirt roads and had no electricity or plumbing, authorities told the Times Union at the time. After an extensive search, officers spotted him leaving a Nicholville, St. Lawrence County, bar in May 2004 and traced him to a remote cabin. He was sent back to prison for seven more years on a parole violation.